Tartan has been doing a great job at keeping films coming in their Asian Extreme label, the emphasis of course being on Asian horror films, the bread and butter of Hollywood these days with far too many remakes to count. However, there are other countries that have been lost in the shuffle. Horror today isn’t like what it was back in the late 70’s when slasher films became popular or in the 80’s when video stores it seems were dominated by Italian splatter. Every country that makes films actually does have it’s entry into the horror genre, and once again Spain is vying for horror fans approval.

H6: Diary of a Serial Killer has a lot of hype just from the packaging. “The Spanish answer to Hostel;” from the producers of Basic Instinct 2 and Sexy Beast; and some of these films are going to provide a great lure. The film opens with Antonio Frau (Fernando Acaso) in a argument with his then girlfriend, and we quickly discover that this is fairly common, not to mention that Frau has a rather violent disposition. Fast –forward fifteen years and Frau has just been released from prison, having killed his last girlfriend, but he’s also found that he’s inherited a rather large and ornate guest house that once belonged to his aunt who has recently passed on.

Antonio then weds Francisca (Maria Jose Bausa), a woman that he was writing to while in prison. She’s merely married him to escape her family and has been seeing a married man on the side. That’s not Antonio’s real concern however. Instead, he has decided that he’s going to cleanse those that he deems are immoral, and he’s also keeping a diary of his works, his killings, so that one day, the world will know what he’s done. In the vast guest house which once was a brothel, he has set up one room to do his dirty work and begins luring in prostitutes whom he degrades, tortures, abuses, and rapes in hopes that they will ask forgiveness for their sins.

H6 visually begins rather well with the use of the gothic looking guest house filled with beautiful imagery, wallpaper, and antique furniture. Baron also gets some very good images and camera work added into an already great setting to make the film appear that much more appealing, but sadly this doesn’t necessarily help H6 too much and in fact, his style soon becomes overused. There is a tendency to reuse the same tilted camera angles over and over again and instead of actually making the film captivating, there is often the though that we’ve seen this style used already in the movie. Move along and deliver something else.

The premise of course is also one that’s interesting; a serial killer keeping a log of his heinous acts so that others will one day know of the atrocities that he has committed and, as Frau hopes, immortalize him. This isn’t too terribly uncommon as the past few years have given us films based on the killings and lives of notable modern day serial killers such as Ed Gein, Ted Bundy, and John Gacy, but where H6 fails miserably is in what it tries to present as gruesome acts.

Frau has decided that he wants to cleanse those that he deems to be immoral, prostitutes for the most part, but his methods consist simply of imprisoning women, humiliating them while trying to get them to repent, and then butchering them with only a chainsaw. H6 makes efforts to capitalize on the famous premise of our minds creating something more terrible than what can be shown on film, but really, there’s but one thing that can happen, and instead of trying to go back to the old school slasher style, H6 instead wants to consider showing showers of blood and terrified screams as being more than enough.

The attempt at combing an art house style with a bit of blood and degradation simply doesn’t work. Frau at no point in my opinion becomes the monster that the movie wants him to be, and instead he’s nothing more than a flat, tired, and rather bland character that really is nothing more than a one trick pony. He knows one method of killing, and while the end of the film his supposed body count is around eighteen, we only see four deaths in the film, and none of them are that out of the ordinary. Even the chainsaw usage really isn’t something that hasn’t already been seen in films before. While most serial killers in film as well as real life have some type of motive or background that has pushed them to their current mindset, Frau doesn’t necessarily have any of the interesting history to make him a compelling character. Instead, he’s given the title of killer with no reason but to kill, and H6 quickly takes a turn from being an interesting film to one that is uninteresting and even draining to some extent is it continues to try and get under your skin. This is something that it never really does accomplish.

As for the comparison to Hostel, I fail to see the similarity. While I didn’t care much for Hostel, at least it did have a fair amount of gore, and there were moments in the film that really could be considered shocking or disturbing, but H6 doesn’t even come close to having the same degree of depravity. Instead, this film simply tries to be creepy, it wants to shock you, but it fails in each and every attempt and becomes an exercise in tedious film making.

There are only two bonus features on the DVD. One is an interview with Martin Gerrdo Baron and Fernando Acaso, the other simply a look at the theatrical trailer. While I might have enjoyed seeing a look at the location that H6 was shot at, to be honest, by the time the film was over, I wasn’t in the mood to have much more to do with it, so the small amount of bonus material was actually quite appreciated.

While I don’t discount the ability of filmmakers in Spain to make a good horror film, it has been done in the past, H6 isn’t something that I find is going to be groundbreaking in any way. H6 might be memorable in terms of the look of the film, but as for real sustenance and value to the genre, it falls incredibly short. This is a diary that is probably better left under lock and key and the small amount of enjoyment that the film may provide does quite match with the amount of boredom that some are going to feel while waiting for the movie to actually do something rather than experiencing the same type of torment as Frau’s victims.

-mike-